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SUN, 07 APR 2002 12:12:06 GMT

Serbia in the Election Year

Who Will be President

The only thing that is still preventing main protagonists on Serbia's
political scene to make the necessity of early parliamentary elections
public are calculations about possible losses. Everything else will be a
gain

AIM Belgrade, April 1, 2002

The March agreement on the union that will in the next three years be
called Serbia and Montenegro, signed under unconcealed pressure of the
European Union and its representative Javier Solana - along with
numerous doubts and much discontent - has also brought certainty that
the year 2002 in the by now former FR Yugoslavia (FRY) will primarily be
an election year. The elections for the joint parliament of Serbia and
Montenegro will be scheduled by the end of the year, after the
parliaments of both states pass the agreement on the union and
constitutional principles of the union. In that case, both members
should pass new constitutions that will be in harmony with the
requirements and standards of the European Union. The procedure of
amending the existing constitutions of Serbia and Montenegro (and FR
Yugoslavia, as well) can be initiated and implemented in different ways:
by a referendum which (in Serbia) requires the support of more than half
of the citizens of age, by an assembly decision with the support of two
thirds of the deputies and previous general political consent to
proclaim the assembly to be constitutional, or by scheduling elections
for constitutional assembly.

Every reasonable administration would use the political circumstances
which dictate scheduling of regular (presidential in Serbia and in
Montenegro, local in Montenegro and a part of Serbia) and early
elections (required by the agreement signed in Belgrade and in
Barcelona) to round off the election season. As concerning Serbia, this
means that it should schedule early parliamentary elections. Reason,
however, is not a necessary precondition for the existence and survival
of a regime, and all things considered, especially in Serbia. It would
be difficult to explain how could the ruling coalition, Democratic
Opposition of Serbia (DOS) afford such a decline of support that is
registered by all public opinion polls. The warning increase of
indecisiveness and lack of commitment that reached two fifths of the
electorate - which is practically equal to the percentage of those who
still support DOS - shows that the ruling coalition is surviving mostly
thanks to the absence of competition on the political scene. On the
other hand, the conviction that early parliamentary elections are
necessary is expressed by 57 per cent of the pollees who participated in
the poll of Marten Board International from Belgrade; the reason why
they are necessary 51 per cent sees in the failure of the government to
fulfill its promises, and 17.5 per cent of the participants in the poll
see it in the need to clarify relations within DOS. With 12.5 per cent
of those who believe that the elections will accelerate transition and
reforms, this poll points out that a large majority of the people are
inclined towards having the current political situation in Serbia
resolved by elections.

Since August last year, this "current political situation" is a
euphemism that stands for unconcealed incapability and unwillingness of
the leaders of DOS to put public interest before personal animosities.
The period of scandals began in August last year with the murder of
Momir Gavrilovic, former worker of State Security Service, and it
reached its climax some time ago when Momcilo Perisic, deputy prime
minister of Serbia, was arrested under suspicion of espionage. The
murderer of Gavrilovic who had met advisors of President of FRY Vojislav
Kostunica, was not found.

The "Delimustafic scandal" that started in the end of last year by the
arrest of former minister of internal affairs of Bosnia & Herzegovina,
Alija Delimustafic, in Belgrade, that caused a whole series of
accusations among the quarrelling parties of former DOS, ended by the
pronounced sentence of 90 days in prison (that had passed in the
meantime) for the possession of an identity card with a false name in
it. A new wave of severe mutual accusations was provoked by the arrest
of Momcilo Perisic. What some journalists call "DOS Minus" - consisting
of Prime Minister Zoran Djindic's Democratic Party (DS) and the minor
parties which support him, that obviously often condition that support
of theirs - accuses Vojislav Kostunica both in the capacity of the
president of FRY and that of the leader of the Democratic Party of
Serbia (DSS), in the former capacity, of anti-state, and in the latter,
of anti-reform activities.

Regardless of the fact that it has met most of the requirements of the
USA, the certainty that the Government of Serbia will have to extradite
a few persons indicted of war crimes to the Hague is not making things
any better. "DOS Minus" has not supported the latest Kostunica's efforts
to regulate the cooperation with the Hague Tribunal by some kind of a
law and it put itself - it seems, quite short-sightedly - in a situation
to carry out the extraditions pursuant its own decree again. In this
way, it additionally reduced the support of the public. Regular public
opinion polls show a new significant sharp decline of popularity of the
government of Prime Minister Djindjic immediately after the espionage
scandal involving deputy prime minister Momcilo Perisic had broken out.
The next decline of popularity will follow immediately after
extraditions, since the only thing that has a stable negative rating in
Serbia is the Hague Tribunal (even NATO, three years after bombing of
Yugoslavia, has slightly improved its image among the citizens of
Serbia).

An additional burden for Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic is the part of
the government that is still failing to justify its existence. Unlike
the unexpectedly popular minister of finance Bozidar Djelic, there is,
for instance, minister of police Dusan Mihajlovic who has in the past
year several times announced his resignation, but has not submitted it
even after the declaration of Prime Minister Djindjic that in fifty
towns of Serbia everybody knows who controls the local mafia, who are
the judges that tolerate this and who is collaborating with whom in
shady dealings. This "year of privatization" (sale of 90 enterprises was
announced) minister in charge, Aleksandar Vlahovic has entered with the
burden of insufficiently transparent sale of Beocin cement factory to
French Lapharge; minister of justice and local self-administration,
Vladan Batic has offered and supported quite bureaucratic, almost feudal
powers of municipality heads...

Prime Minister Djindjic himself added his own contribution to all that.
Last summer he had announced a reconstruction of the cabinet for
September, and later postponed it for March 2002. To this day this
reconstruction has not taken place, although public opinion polls in
January showed that 67 per cent of the citizens considered it necessary.
The problem again comes down to the relation between "DOS Minus" and
DSS: The mentioned poll shows that two thirds of the pollees support the
return of DSS into the government of Serbia. Instead of the
reconstruction of the cabinet, the Prime Minister spent considerable
time on "buying" support within "DOS Minus". The northern province of
Serbia, Voivodina, for instance, was given back its autonomy
jurisdiction by a package of laws. In order to ensure the support of a
minor party, Djindjic's government approved construction of a tobacco
factory in Cacak practically overnight, despite the previous decision
that this type of investments should be subject to a general
decision-making, in a public procedure and based on a public tender of
all interested parties.

Immediately after signing of the agreement on the union of Serbia and
Montenegro, deputy federal Premier Miroljub Labus, known as "the one who
bears good news" because of his role in negotiations with international
financial organizations, declared that he was reflecting on running for
the president of Serbia. Regardless of possible postponing or expediting
(the current President of Serbia, Milan Milutinovic, is indicted by the
Hague Tribunal along with three other closest associates of Milosevic),
this election will certainly take place by the end of this year.
Miroljub Labus is undoubtedly popular in public: along with Vojislav
Kostunica and Bozidar Djelic, he is by far the most favourably judged
person on the political scene. In view of the political circumstances in
Serbia, the fact that the public looks upon him - like Djelic for that
matter - as an expert and not a professional politician is an
exceptional advantage. The support he has got from G17+ expert group he
is a member of added to his image of a successful expert, minimizing his
membership in Djindjic's DS (Djindjic himself praised his candidacy in
not so many words, stressing that DOS could have other good candidates).

Labus' clear declaration that he was reflecting on possible candidacy
had a trigger effect provoking a whole avalanche of official and
unofficial candidacies for the president of Serbia. Velimir Ilic, mayor
of Cacak, "champion of October 5 revolution", who is still a potential
deputy prime minister of Serbia in the government which, if Prime
Minister Djindjic fulfills his promise, will be the largest one in
Europe, is announcing his own candidacy, except if his counter-candidate
is Vojislav Kostunica. President of FRY, Vojislav Kostunica, who has on
several occasions "offered" the post of the future president of the
union of Serbia and Montenegro to somebody from the smaller part of the
country, refuses to give the answer to the question about his own
candidacy for the post of the president of Serbia by saying that at the
moment he was busy contemplating on a "third matter" - the future of the
union of Serbia and Montenegro.

President of the Party of Serb Unity (SSJ) founded by Zeljko Raznjatovic
Arkan, Borislav Pelevic, humbly declared that his possible candidacy for
president of Serbia should be proposed and, in case of other candidates
from within his party, supported by local party organizations. The
leaders of the Radicals, Vojislav Seselj, "nominated" once more his
vice-president, Tomislav Nikolic, for the post. Vuk Draskovic, the
biggest political loser of the October 5 changes in Serbia and the
leader of the Serb Revival Movement (which is not even represented in
the parliament), declared that his party would nominate "somebody else"
for the president of Serbia. The officials of Milosevic's Socialist
Party of Serbia have manifested a similar dose of realism and
humbleness: their president is in the Hague, and it seems that nobody
has the courage to attempt to revive this party.

The list of those who dream that they might run in the elections for
president is certainly much longer. Former Yugoslav prime minister,
American citizen and businessman, Milan Panic, has not yet declared his
intention to put up his candidacy, but - judging by the ads in the past
few weeks about successful business deals that begin with 200 and end up
with 2.5 billion dollars - he has obviously already launched his
campaign. In view of the speculations that he has already printed a
hundred thousand election posters, that he is shooting a feature-length
film about his career, but also of the experience of a man who had in
just ten days of an effective campaign "snatched away" more than one
third of the votes from his rival at the time Slobodan Milosevic,
Panic's ambitions should not be underestimated, nor his possible
decision to run in the election, since he is from experience well
informed about the relations in the former oppositionist, nowadays
ruling Serbia's political scene. There is also, although not with such a
clear and good background, Serb Diaspora has also announced its own
candidate - Miroslav Mike Djordjevic, one of the many "richest Serbs in
the world".

Shifting the interest of the public to possible candidates for the post
of the president of Serbia, the election for which will have to take
place in January next year at the latest, could be interpreted as a test
of the disposition of the citizens. Analysts in Belgrade estimate,
however, that - along with all the elections that have come on the
agenda by reorganization of the joint state - Serbia will also be the
battleground of early parliamentary elections in which the former allies
in the struggle against Slobodan Milosevic will be rivals: "DOS Minus"
and DSS, G17+ and, perhaps, even Otpor (Resistance People's Movement)
which has also dissolved and split in the meantime. According to the
well informed sources, the question that battles are fought over when
early parliamentary elections are concerned is the necessary minimum for
entering the parliament. The current three per cent is too high for
some. This detail perhaps shows how big their contribution is to real
changes in Serbia.